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“We drove right past you!” Langdon choked. “I saw you in the back of a black van, surrounded by soldiers. I thought you were a captive. You seemed delirious, like they had drugged you.”
“You saw us?” Dr. Sinskey looked surprised. “Strangely, you’re right … they had medicated me.” She paused. “But only because I ordered them to.”
Langdon was now wholly confused. She told them to drug her?
“You may not remember this,” Sinskey said, “but as our C-130 landed in Florence, the pressure changed, and I suffered an episode of what is known as paroxysmal positional vertigo—a severely debilitating inner-ear condition that I’ve experienced in the past. It’s temporary and not serious, but it causes victims to become so dizzy and nauseated they can barely hold their heads up. Normally I’d go to bed and endure intense nausea, but we were facing the Zobrist crisis, and so I prescribed myself hourly injections of metoclopramide to keep me from vomiting. The drug has the serious side effect of causing intense drowsiness, but it enabled me at least to run operations by phone from the back of the van. The SRS team wanted to take me to a hospital, but I ordered them not to do so until we had completed our mission of reacquiring you. Fortunately, the vertigo finally passed during the flight up to Venice.”
Langdon slumped into the bed, unnerved. I’ve been running all day from the World Health Organization—the very people who recruited me in the first place.
“Now we have to focus, Professor,” Sinskey declared, her tone urgent. “Zobrist’s plague … do you have any idea where it is?” She gazed down at him with an expression of intense expectation. “We have very little time.”
It’s far away, Langdon wanted to say, but something stopped him. He glanced up at Brüder, a man who had fired a gun at him this morning and nearly strangled him a little while earlier. For Langdon, the ground had been shifting so quickly beneath him that he had no idea whom to believe anymore.
Sinskey leaned in, her expression still more intense. “We are under the impression that the contagion is here in Venice. Is that correct? Tell us where, and I’ll send a team ashore.”
Langdon hesitated.
“Sir!” Brüder barked impatiently. “You obviously know something … tell us where it is! Don’t you understand what’s about to happen?”
“Agent Brüder!” Sinskey spun angrily on the man. “That’s enough,” she commanded, then turned back to Langdon and spoke quietly. “Considering what you’ve been through, it’s entirely understandable that you’re disoriented, and uncertain whom to trust.” She paused, staring deep into his eyes. “But our time is short, and I’m asking you to trust me.”
“Can Langdon stand?” a new voice asked.
A small, well-tended man with a deep tan appeared in the doorway. He studied Langdon with a practiced calm, but Langdon saw danger in his eyes.
Sinskey motioned for Langdon to stand up. “Professor, this is a man with whom I’d prefer not to collaborate, but the situation is serious enough that we have no choice.”
Uncertain, Langdon swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood erect, taking a moment to get his balance back.
“Follow me,” the man said, moving toward the door. “There’s something you need to see.”
Langdon held his ground. “Who are you?”
The man paused and steepled his fingers. “Names are not important. You can call me the provost. I run an organization … which, I’m sorry to say, made the mistake of helping Bertrand Zobrist achieve his goals. Now I am trying to fix that mistake before it’s too late.”
“What is it you want to show me?” Langdon asked.
The man fixed Langdon with an unyielding stare. “Something that will leave no doubt in your mind that we’re all on the same side.”
CHAPTER 78
LANGDON FOLLOWED THE tanned man through a maze of claustrophobic corridors belowdecks with Dr. Sinskey and the ECDC soldiers trailing behind in a single file. As the group neared a staircase, Langdon hoped they were about to ascend toward daylight, but instead they descended deeper into the ship.
Deep in the bowels of the vessel now, their guide led them through a cubicle farm of sealed glass chambers—some with transparent walls and some with opaque ones. Inside each soundproofed room, various employees were hard at work typing on computers or speaking on telephones. Those who glanced up and noticed the group passing through looked seriously alarmed to see strangers in this part of the ship. The tanned man gave them a nod of reassurance and pressed on.
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